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26 - Henry Fords Own Story by Rose Wilder Lane · Henry Fords Own Story

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  Speaker 1: Chapter twenty five of Henry Ford's Own Story. This LibriVox
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  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. Recording by Leanne Howlett.
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  Speaker 1: Henry Ford's Own Story by Rose Wilder Lane, Chapter twenty five,
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  Speaker 1: five dollars a day minimum. The Selden patent fight had
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  Speaker 1: continued through all the early years of Ford's struggle to
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  Speaker 1: establish himself in business. At last it was settled. Ford
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  Speaker 1: won it. The whole industry was freed from an oppressive tax,
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  Speaker 1: and his long fight was over. Immediately, of course, other
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  Speaker 1: cars came into the low priced field. Other manufacturers tardily
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  Speaker 1: following Ford began the downward pressure and prices which now
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  Speaker 1: makes it possible for thousands of persons with only moderate
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  Speaker 1: means to own automobiles. For the first time, Ford faced
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  Speaker 1: competition in his own price class. Innumerable business problems confronted
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  Speaker 1: the farmer mechanic from the time he opened his office
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  Speaker 1: doors in the early morning until the last workman had
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  Speaker 1: left the plant and only his light was burning. Businessmen came, financiers, salesmen, lawyers, designers.
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  Speaker 1: Every day. For two hours he conferred with his superintendents
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  Speaker 1: and foremen in the main factory. Every detail of the
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  Speaker 1: business was under his supervision, a smaller man, or a
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  Speaker 1: less simple one, would have been absorbed by the sheer
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  Speaker 1: mass of work. Ford settled every problem by his own
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  Speaker 1: simple rule, do what is fundamentally best for everybody. It
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  Speaker 1: will work out for our interests in the end. And
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  Speaker 1: always he was pondering the big problem of putting back
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  Speaker 1: into active use the millions that were accumulating to his credit.
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  Speaker 1: Every year, the price was lowered on his cars, following
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  Speaker 1: his original policy of making the automobile cheap. Still, the
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  Speaker 1: sales increased by leaps and bounds, and his margin of
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  Speaker 1: profit on each car mounted into a greater total. The
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  Speaker 1: whole system is wrong, he says. People have the wrong
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  Speaker 1: idea of money. They think it is valuable in itself.
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  Speaker 1: They try to get all they can, and they've built
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  Speaker 1: up a system where one man has too much and
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  Speaker 1: another not enough. As long as that system is working,
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  Speaker 1: there does not seem any way to even things up.
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  Speaker 1: But I made up my mind to do what I could.
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  Speaker 1: Money valuable. I tell you, gold is the least valuable
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  Speaker 1: metal in the world. Edison says, it is no good
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  Speaker 1: at all. It is too soft to make a single
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  Speaker 1: useful article. Suppose there was only one loaf of bread
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  Speaker 1: in the world, but all the money on earth buy
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  Speaker 1: it from the man who had it. Money itself is nothing,
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  Speaker 1: absolutely nothing. It is only valuable as a transmitter a
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  Speaker 1: method of handling things that are valuable. The minute one
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  Speaker 1: man gets more of it than he can use to
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  Speaker 1: buy the real things he needs. The surplus is sheer waste.
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  Speaker 1: It is stored up energy that is no good to anybody.
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  Speaker 1: Every bit of energy that is wasted that way hurts
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  Speaker 1: the whole world, and in the end it hurts the
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  Speaker 1: man who has it as much as it hurts anybody.
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  Speaker 1: Look here, you make a machine to do something useful,
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  Speaker 1: don't you. Well, then, if it is built so that
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  Speaker 1: it keeps wasting energy, doesn't the whole machine wear itself
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  Speaker 1: out without doing half as much as it should. Isn't
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  Speaker 1: that last energy bad for every part of the machine. Well,
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  Speaker 1: that is the way the world is running now. The
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  Speaker 1: whole system is wrong. A very little thought brings almost
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  Speaker 1: any of us to that conclusion, especially if the thinker
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  Speaker 1: is one whose surplus money is all in the other
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  Speaker 1: man's bank account. But Ford held to that thought as
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  Speaker 1: few of us would with the surplus millions in his
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  Speaker 1: own hands. Furthermore, he proposed not merely to think, but
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  Speaker 1: to act on that thought. He is not a man
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  Speaker 1: to act hastily. Before he made his engine, he worked
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  Speaker 1: out the drawings. Before he distributed his money. He selected
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  Speaker 1: two hundred men from the workers in his shop and
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  Speaker 1: sent them out to learn all they could of the
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  Speaker 1: living conditions of the other thousands. They worked for a year,
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  Speaker 1: and at the end of that time, Ford, going carefully
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  Speaker 1: over their reports, saw plainly where his surplus money should go.
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  Speaker 1: Over four thousand of the eighteen thousand men working in
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  Speaker 1: the Ford plant were living in dire poverty and unspeakable
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  Speaker 1: home conditions. Families were huddled into tenements where in wet weather,
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  Speaker 1: water stood on the floor, wives were ill, uncared for,
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  Speaker 1: babies were dressed in rags. Another five thousand men in
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  Speaker 1: his employ were living in conditions which could only be
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  Speaker 1: called fare. Only three hundred sixty four out of eighteen
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  Speaker 1: thousand owned their own homes. Yet the employees in the
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  Speaker 1: Ford shops were above the average of factory working men.
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  Speaker 1: They were paid the regular scale of wages, not overworked,
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  Speaker 1: and their surroundings at the plant were sanitary and pleasant.
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  Speaker 1: In those terrible figures, Ford was seeing merely the ordinary
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  Speaker 1: accustomed result of the wasted energy represented in those idle
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  Speaker 1: millions of dollars. He went over them thoroughly, noting that
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  Speaker 1: the scale of living grew steadily better as the salaries increased.
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  Speaker 1: Observing that the most wretched class was mainly composed of
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  Speaker 1: foreign workmen, ignorant, unskilled labor, most of them unable to
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  Speaker 1: speak English, he figured thought drew his own conclusions. He
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  Speaker 1: had been studying relief plans, methods of factory management in Germany,
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  Speaker 1: welfare work of all kinds. When he had finished his
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  Speaker 1: consideration of those reports, he threw overboard all the plans
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  Speaker 1: other people had made and announced his own. Every man
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  Speaker 1: who works for me is going to get enough for
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  Speaker 1: a comfortable living, he said. If an able bodied man
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  Speaker 1: can't earn that, he's either lazy or ignorant. If he's lazy,
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  Speaker 1: he's sick, will have a hospital. If he's ignorant he
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  Speaker 1: wants to learn, we'll have a school. Meantime, figure out
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  Speaker 1: in the accounting bureau a scale of profit sharing that
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  Speaker 1: will make every man's earnings at least five dollars a day.
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  Speaker 1: The man that gets the smallest wages gets the biggest
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  Speaker 1: share of the profits he needs it most. On January twelfth,
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  Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen, Ford more than satisfied the expectant manufacturers of
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  Speaker 1: the world. He launched into the industrial world a most
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  Speaker 1: startling bombshell, five dollars a day for every workman in
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  Speaker 1: the Ford factory. He's crazy. Other manufacturers said, aghast, Why
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  Speaker 1: those dirty, ignorant foreigners don't earn half that. You can't
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  Speaker 1: run a business that way. That man Ford will upset
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  Speaker 1: the whole industrial situation. What is he trying to do anyhow,
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  Speaker 1: they demanded whenevery Detroit factory workman grew restless. The news
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  Speaker 1: spread rapidly everywhere. Workers dropped their tools and hurried to
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  Speaker 1: the Ford factory five dollars a day. When Ford reached
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  Speaker 1: the factory in the morning of the second day after
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  Speaker 1: his announcement, he found Woodward Avenue crowded with men waiting
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  Speaker 1: to get a job in the shops. An hour later,
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  Speaker 1: the crowds had jammed into a mob which massed outside
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  Speaker 1: the buildings and spread far into adjoining streets, pushing, struggling,
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  Speaker 1: fighting to get closer to the doors. It was not
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  Speaker 1: safe to open them. That mass of humanity pushed from
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  Speaker 1: behind would have wrecked the offices. The manager of the
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  Speaker 1: employment department opened a window and shouted to the frantic
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  Speaker 1: crowd that there were no jobs, but the sound of
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  Speaker 1: his voice was lost in the roar that greeted him.
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  Speaker 1: He shut the window and telephoned the police department for reserves. Still,
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  Speaker 1: the crowds increased every moment by new groups of men,
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  Speaker 1: wildly eager to get a job which would pay them
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  Speaker 1: a comfortable living. Ford looked down at them from his window.
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  Speaker 1: Can't you make them understand and we haven't any jobs,
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  Speaker 1: he asked the employment manager. The man, disheveled, breathing hard
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  Speaker 1: and horse with his efforts to make his voice heard,
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  Speaker 1: shook his head. The police are coming, he said, then
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  Speaker 1: there'll be somebody hurt. Ford predicted. We can't have that.
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  Speaker 1: Get the fire hose and turn it on the crowd.
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  Speaker 1: That will do the business. A moment later, a solid
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  Speaker 1: two inch stream of water shot from the doors of
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  Speaker 1: the Ford factory. It swept the struggling men half off
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  Speaker 1: their feet, knocked the breath from their bodies, left them gasping, startled, dripping.
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  Speaker 1: They scattered. In a few moments, the white stream from
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  Speaker 1: the hose was sweeping back and forth over a widening
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  Speaker 1: space bare of men. When the police arrived, the crowd
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  Speaker 1: was so dispersed that the men in uniform marched easily
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  Speaker 1: through it without using their clubs. For a week a
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  Speaker 1: special force of policemen guarded the Ford factory, turning back
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  Speaker 1: heartsick men disappointed in their hope of a comfortable living wage.
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  Speaker 1: It was a graphic illustration of the harm done the
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  Speaker 1: whole machine by the loss of energy stored in money
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  Speaker 1: held idle in the hands of a few men. End
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  Speaker 1: of Chapter twenty five.